The former heavyweight champion of the world and the world's most notorious boxing promoter are battling in court over millions of dollars.

They have been locked up in a bitter grudge match since Tyson first fled as
the marquee attraction in King's stable of fighters and filed a
lawsuit in federal court claiming that the promoter (in cahoots with
Tyson's friends-turned-co-managers, John Horne and Rory Halloway) had
conspired to bilk him for at least $100 million in purse money and earnings
over the years. The charges included such minute details as the rights to
Tyson's likeness being used in action figure dolls. Never to be
outdone, or outflanked, King filed a counter suit against Tyson dismissing
all charges. He seeks $110 million.

It hasn't been easy for Tyson to take his case
to trial. In Tyson's first deposition, King unexpectedly turned up
during the proceedings while Tyson's lawyers quizzed their client
under oath. King sat down across from Tyson (out of camera view) and began
to shoot the fighter menacing stares and intimidating faces, according to
people in the room. Furious, Tyson jumped at King and, while lawyers and
court bailiffs were able to keep Tyson from socking him into the nearest
emergency room, Tyson did manage to dump a pitcher of water onto
King's Afro.

"He persuaded me that I could trust him,"
Tyson told his lawyers. "I depended totally on Don King in taking
care of all my financials."

Tyson's admission captures the beginning of one
of many turbulent chapters in the story of a troubled boxing legend who
earned history's honor of becoming the youngest, perhaps most
devastating, heavyweight champion and then placed his future into the
weathered hands of boxing's most notorious promoter. Years after that
initial liaison, Tyson's script has turned into a tale of blown
opportunities and kingdom squandered. For King, the case against Tyson
represents one last challenge in court against all odds and accusations.

The groundwork for this tangled web was laid early on
in their relationship.

Only three months after co-promoting his first fight,
a 22-year-old Tyson signed away powers of attorney privileges to
"Daddy" Don. "I authorized him to look out for me and my
money and to make sure we don't have no tax problems. I would do
anything he told me to do," Tyson said in a deposition.

After only one year under King's financial
stewardship, the fighter claims his millions went to keep King's
boxing operations, Don King Productions (DKP) afloat, supporting undercard
fighters, King's family, lawyer and staff, and, ultimately, King
himself. According to King's former employees, Tyson didn't
have a clue what he was paying for, or didn't seem to care that he
was being ripped off.

"It was comical," says Joseph Maffia, who
was then head comptroller for DKP. "We used to joke and laugh about
it in the office all the time. The motto was: When in doubt, CBMT!"

That's King lingo: Charge Back Mike Tyson.

A shy, soft-spoken CPA, Maffia is likely to be a
primary witness in Tyson's approaching trial. He was also a witness
in the government's blown attempt in the mid-1990s to prosecute King.
He first testified against King in front of the U.S. Senate's
permanent subcommittee on investigations. Maffia is tired of testifying, he
says, and prefers to let the numbers speak.

According to a copy of a 1998 ledger from DKP,
for instance, Maffia's own $4,000 Christmas bonus from DKP was
charged to Tyson. Although Maffia and King's other employees never
technically worked for Tyson, the fighter also claims he covered an
additional $28,000 in holiday bonuses for King's late matchmaker and
public relations man, Al Braverman, King's executive director, Dana
Jameson, King's limousine driver, Yusef "Captain Joe"
Shah, and King's wife, Henrietta. Records show that Tyson even paid
for a number of DKP's office supplies, extraneous purchases and
charitable and political donations: $6,200 worth of turkeys from W&W
Meats in Cleveland; a $15,000 donation for Father George Clements, not to
mention bearing part of a $1,500 donation to Democratic presidential
candidate Rev. Al Sharpton, an old friend of King's who also once
went undercover for the FBI in one of the agency's many bungled
attempts to convict King for virtually any crime it could find. Dozens of
other entries were also billed to Tyson, everything from traveling expenses
for King employees to the rent on a condo in Manhattan.

"Mike just didn't seem to care,"
Maffia says. "Maybe in his mind he figured he was making $10 million
to $20 million a fight, so if some went missing, it wasn't really
worth fighting for.

"We bombarded Mike with the bills and
contracts," Maffia says. "It's not like we sat down with
him like any other accountant might to a client and explain: This is what
you're paying us for and why. He was never given the opportunity to
read anything that was put in front of him."

The stakes in this
case could not be higher. A dramatic courtroom showdown should decide the
fate of both enigmatic boxing legends. "Only in America!" as
King might say. With one jury decision, Tyson looks to score his biggest
payday yet and, in a twist worthy of Shakespeare, the bankrupt fighter
looks to retire the plum promoter in his place.

"It's a character fight," says Dale
Kinsella, the lead attorney for Tyson. "A lot of fighters have sued
Don over the years, and a win for Mike could mean sweet justice."

But so far, the trial of all trials, like so many
hyped promotions in boxing, has been only a tease. Lawyers were to begin
picking jurors for the case last September and now, after a number of
bizarre events that have plagued Tyson since he checked out of the
Peninsula last spring, it's unclear when Tyson's day in court
may come. A new trial date has tentatively been scheduled for the third
week of April or until the depths of Tyson's financial morass have
been navigated and untangled.

But making sense of Tyson's earnings and
spontaneous spending sprees could take a while, and already Tyson seems to
have lost interest in the merits of his claims. He rarely calls his
lawyers. He seems detached and resigned. Asked about his chances in court,
Tyson told me recently, "I don't really know nothing about
that, man. That's something that I be handling in a totally different
arena."

Unlike the fighter, King has been following the
case against Tyson at every turn. An avid reader of Shakespeare's
tragedies, King's favorite tome is The Merchant of Venice, he says, a
tale of revenge, money lending and betrayal. He understands the
reversal-of-fortune plot line that lays ahead in the case. He insists he
isn't worried.

"I didn't do nothing wrong," King
told me recently over dinner in Las Vegas, where he was promoting a
three-title-fight card. Any allegation of fiscal treason, he added, misses
the point. "It's not really a problem of whether I'm
right or wrong," he says. "Who really wins? Nobody really wins.
It leaves only a lot of bruised feelings. It leaves divisiveness in the
community. It leaves people being anti when they should be pro."

King has come a long way from running the numbers game
amid the pimps, grifters and low-life thugs of the Cleveland ghetto, and
doing four years time in state prison for pistol-whipping an old friend to
death over a $600 bet. He is the first black promoter to be elected into
the boxing hall of fame and the only nonathlete that Sports Illustrated magazine
named as one of the world's 40 most powerful sports figures. He is
also probably the only man to be convicted of manslaughter and have the
privilege to "meet and greet" a number of sitting U.S.
presidents. King attributes this success to the country's tolerance
for second chances ("My country tis a thee!") and the
opportunities inherent within free enterprise ("My magic lies with my
people ties!").

King seems to carry a kitschy fondness for manifest
destiny, and in that gambling, good-luck, gold-rush way, he is a relic of a
more brazen and fearless America. Put simply, he's a gambling man who
likes to win -- and he's good at it. Within King's office
compound off Interstate 95 in Florida, a small coaster on his grand
mahogany desk reads: "When you're the lead dog, the view never
changes."

Often in his bouts, however, when King steps into the
ring, chest out and head high and waving miniature plastic flags, he is
heckled by fight fans. They might hold grudges for the fates of
"Terrible" Tim Witherspoon, who publicly criticized King for
shackling fighters with onerous "multi-fight contracts," who
protested King's drug-infested stables and, strapped for cash, came
back to King again and again and eventually fought for the heavyweight
championship for a meager $90,000. There's Muhammad Ali, who, instead
of taking King to court on a $1 million claim, settled with a suitcase
filled with $50,000 cash. And there's
King's first fighter, Earnie Shavers, who was often spotted on the
casino floors of Las Vegas at King's boxing shows begging for money.

It may be unfair to hold King responsible for the
fallout fates of his fighters, but a striking number of them have pressed
legal action against him. All the suits have carried similar allegations:
that King overcharged them for training or travel expenses; or that King
shortened the net gross of the promotion by deducting hundreds of thousands
in "off the top" expenses; or that King convinced them to sign
exploitative contracts that consisted of little more then a dotted line and
a blank page.

Asked why hundreds of fighters had sued him, King
says, "You find a lot of guys that don't got a problem until
somebody tells them they got a problem and then when once they got a
problem, they don't understand what the problem is. But they think
that in the end they can get something for nothing. That's the
mentality."

If the Tyson case does go to trial, King is confident
of victory. "I've weathered the storm of several indictments
and, under the worst of conditions and under the worst of odds, I've
come out from under them OK," he says. "It's because of
this country. I love this country, man! Go into a courtroom, [seek] redress
for your grievances, and get some justice!

"When you look at the record," he adds, in
a vague summary of events with Tyson, "you had two or three urchins
from the ghetto -- me included -- who came together, rose to an
occasion where you could go out and make more money then you ever dreamed
of in your whole life, and everyone gets paid, and everyone spends, and one
person tries to keep more money [King], and the other [Tyson] gets mad at
that person [King] for trying to keep his share, because they want to drown
in their own tears. And then they come up with ideas that you must be
taking something from them. I find this all the time. But hey, it's
better than sitting on the stoop."

Just mentioning King's name seems to presume
guilt, he says, and it's hardly fair given his competition.
"There's worse in boxing then me," King once told Joe
Spinelli, a former FBI agent, cited in Jack Newfield's Only in
America: The Life and Crimes of Don King. "I just play by the
rules that exist. I'm just a 24-hour-a-day guy. Nobody can outwork
me. That's why I'm on top. Nobody can outwork me and I play by
the rules. The problem is, you don't like the rules."

Even King's enemies praise his conviction and in
his company seem to feel the giddy effects of his uproarious personality.
Promoters Cedric Kushner and Lou DiBella remember a time when King came to
New York and, despite both having pending lawsuits against King, he invited
them to dinner at The Palm. After finishing a spread of lobster and steak
with King, Kushner remembers scurrying home to call DiBella on the phone,
saying, "How fun was that!" Of King, fight manager Shelly
Finkel says, "A master negotiator." Jeff Wald:
"He'll sit [at] a table for thirty or forty hours -- outwork
you to death." Vice president of HBO sports Xavier James:
"There's only one like him." King's son, Carl:
"He's the best. Bar none."

King makes no delusions about his motivations. In
June, at a press conference before a recent boxing match King promoted,
Rich Neiderman, director of boxing operations at the Orleans Hotel and
Casino, told reporters in Las Vegas, "We'd like to thank Don
King for bringing us this great championship fight card. Hopefully, next
time we'll make some money." (Laughter.) King took the podium
for nearly three hours. He was hilarious, poetic and often seemingly
delirious. "A lot of people extol me and my family, but fighters make
more with me then they do with the honest guys!" he said, then
chuckled. "Like me or dislike me, I get the money."

In boxing,
stealing from a fighter has become so engrained into the lore of the sport
that few are willing to give cries of theft any attention. As one
television network executive told me about Tyson's case,
"Nobody could give two shits." Accusations of robbery are
almost expected, if not shrugged off as cliché in an industry
governed without enforceable rules or regulations. There is no union, no
pension plan or guaranteed benefits for either fighter or promoter. There
is only chaos -- "a world of amorphous Jell-O," as Bert
Sugar, the cigar-chomping fight historian, says. It's the last
frontier for unfettered American enterprise, a no-holds-barred landscape
where a fighter like Tyson can go broke after earning more than $300
million -- and a promoter like King can develop a reputation for such
genius, and fiscal chicanery.

Tyson had been warned about King. The bald, nearly
blind, paranoid boxing sage Cus D'Amato told him that when the
championship would come, there would be others coming to earn his trust and
test his financial naïveté. In a story often told,
D'Amato adopted Tyson, the ghetto thief from the Brownsville section
of Brooklyn, New York, arrested 38 times between the age of 10 and 13.
Plagued with an awkward combination of great physical strength and a wispy,
almost feminine voice, Tyson spent his fabled youth sleeping between the
walls of abandoned buildings, mugging older women, sticking up delis and
getting tied to his bed and beaten by his brother and sister who could not
control his behavior. Tyson was the kid who held the gun because the other
thugs could be tried as adults.

He was uncontrollable.

"Our walls were plenty dirty," says Teddy
Atlas, who first trained Tyson under D'Amato. "If there's
a leak in the roof, you know, the spill doesn't just stay in the
kitchen."

Atlas is a rugged disciplinarian, a doctor's son
who carries a scar that runs down the side of his face from a knife fight
and is now one of boxing's leading analysts. Atlas doesn't take
on fighters anymore, he says, because of a tendency to lack in character.
He ended his relationship with Tyson when he escorted the then 16-year-old
fighter into a back alley behind D'Amato's gym, above the
Catskill, New York, police station, and stuck the cold, steel butt of a
loaded 38-caliber pistol into Tyson's ear.